


Liar, Liar

by sinelanguage



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Klance Holiday Exchange, M/M, spy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 09:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13074501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinelanguage/pseuds/sinelanguage
Summary: Despite being fully competent himself, Lance gets stuck on a mission with a spy who’s easy to read, easy to peeve, and absolutely infuriating.





	Liar, Liar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [communikate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/communikate/gifts).



> Thanks to Stella for editing this, and providing one of the best damn lines in this fic.
> 
> Happy Holidays, hope you enjoy your gift!

Lance hadn’t expected Galra Labs to feel so… uncannily normal. Sure, he’d read the reports on what was actually going on here-- some kind of out-there product testing Allura was aggressively unkeen on-- but he didn’t realize how weird the surface tension would feel. A creeping nervousness hung over the office, sterile walls and nondescript cubicles surely hiding secrets in their depths. 

Amidst the shuffling of heads-down office workers, Lance did his best to remain unnoticed, but Keith was making that difficult. Sure, they had the credentials to the place because of Keith’s connection to Blade, but it wasn’t like Keith had to come along.  Lance could’ve done the mission himself, easily, but Keith’d only give them the credentials if he got to tag along, and he wouldn’t even say _why_. 

There was a lot about Keith that Lance just didn’t get. He held high position in Blade, but only worked in brute force. He was painfully obvious about everything, but an enigma about his motivations. Lance would just ignore it if he wasn’t so frustrated with not getting it.

And it wasn’t like Keith was better than Lance at this spy thing; he totally wasn’t. He didn’t have the authority to hold credentials over Lance’s head, since they wouldn’t matter at all if Keith got them caught. 

One of the guards watched the two of them from the corner, and Lance tried not to make eye contact. His visitor’s badge hung like a noose around his neck; if Keith knew any path other than the path of most resistance, the obviousness wouldn’t be a problem.

“The vent’s down the corner,” Keith whispered to Lance, but Lance was sure the guard heard something. Or maybe just sensed their suspicious aura. She looked their way, her eyes following the two of them as they meandered through the cubicles. Keith didn’t notice.

Allura’s file on Keith had mentioned a lack of discipline lightly, like it was an afterthought, and not like it was the way Keith navigated the world. He plowed forward with an enviable purpose, and, despite going about everything the bluntest way possible, sometimes it worked. 

This time, Lance had to step in.    


“Hey, ma’am,” Lance called the guard over, and Keith stiffened next to him. “Do you know where the bathrooms are?” 

Tension left the guard’s shoulders, and she sighed, shaking her head. “Not anywhere near here,” she said. “I take it you’re his visitor…?”

Lance flashed a smile, and elbowed Keith a bit too hard. “Yup,” said Lance. “He _told_ me he knew where the bathrooms on this floor were, but…”

“I _know_ where they are,” Keith interrupted on contrarian instinct, and paused, stopping himself from blowing cover. He had no idea how well he played into Lance’s bluff. A terrible, unwitting actor. 

“Uh-huh,” said Lance, doing what he knew best-- discretion by indiscretion. “Sure you do. Just like you knew where you parked your speeder, and--

The guard in front of them laughed awkwardly, holding two hands in front of herself. “It’s alright, I’m… I’m sure he knows where they are on other floors,” she said, trying to stop a scene, and gestured over her shoulder. “They’re down that hallway, to your left.” 

“Thank you,” Lance said. “At least someone here knows where they’re going,” he continued, and watched out of the corner of his eye as the guard’s focus left them. 

Making long strides down the hall, Lance had to hurry to keep up with Keith. “Oh come on, I don’t even get a thank you?” whispered Lance, once he was sure they were out of the guard’s sight. “She was totally watching us. Which you weren’t helping with, by the way.”

Keith shrugged the accusation off with infuriating ease, ignoring it in favor of pulling Lance further and further into the labyrinth of office cubicles. Sometimes their occupants would glare at the two of them, or glance up like frightened rabbits, but Keith took it in stride. 

In an alcove at the end of the hall, they found the vent shaft. Lance winced just looking at it; it was tiny, and it wouldn’t be easy to get around in. He wondered what kind of intel told Allura that this was an acceptable vent to climb in. 

Lance made easy conversation with any passerby, while Keith made annoyingly easy work of the vent. It didn’t take him long, even though the thing seem bolted on; every time Lance looked over, Keith’d be five steps ahead of where Lance expected. 

Finishing with the vent, Keith motioned him over with the most unsubtle of hand-waves, and after making sure they were clear, Lance regretted it. He never liked the classic climbing in the vents thing, and someone designed these vents specifically to make them terrible for the classic climbing in the vents thing. Uncovered screws, sharp corners, a narrow build-- all specifically designed to for maximum discomfort. 

“Hurry up.”

Lance huffed. Besides the shaft being cramped and cold, he still hadn’t gotten a thank you. That was what he really wanted, and since moving forward means Keith got what  _ he  _ wanted, Lance couldn’t have that. “Only if you say the magic word,” said Lance. 

It took awhile for the comment to sink in. Keith sighed, then said with an unsuspected earnestness, “Please, hurry up?”

Not what Lance was looking for, but Keith really seemed to think that was the answer. “Okay, fine,” he said, shuffling forward into the vent. 

Deeper and deeper into the building they go, until Lance finally recognized their destination. Keith opened the next vent shaft just as infuriatingly easily, and Lance didn’t want to give him the glory of exiting first, so he shoved through the vent. 

Lance landed on the floor in a huff with unbalanced footing, but he at least he landed; Keith stuck the landing, exiting like he wasn’t just shoved in a tiny, jaggedy vent shaft. 

“I swear, those are designed to make sneaking impossible,” Lance muttered, and to his surprise, Keith snorted, even smiling. Maybe he actually had a sense of humor, buried somewhere deep. Lance shook his head and turned away, looking back to the server room. 

If the offices had surface tension, this place just had straight-up tension. The hum of servers raised the hairs on Lance’s neck, and the thunk of a broken air vent made him jump more than once. Even with the security cameras down, Lance couldn’t shake the feeling of a constant gaze on him, and he wondered how bad it would be to work down here. 

All they had to do was set up the tech gadget thing for Pidge to hack the servers. It should be easy, he’d set up the thing plenty of times, but Keith was already on the move.

“Hey-- Keith--?” Lance said as Keith climbed up one of the servers, and tampered with something on the top of it. He clipped a cable with a knife, of all things, and climbed down without leaving a mark.

“Camera,” he said. 

Lance narrowed his eyes. “I thought Pidge got rid of the cameras. She took out the whole security system, how--”

“Your tech operative can take down connected cameras,” Keith said, “But that one wasn’t connected. The light was still on.”

Lance hadn’t even noticed. “Oh,” he said. “Thanks.” Maybe Keith wasn’t completely terrible at this thing. He could make some good decisions. Maybe.

The device was easy to set up after that. Find a hidden place for it, connect it, wait for the light to turn on, and cover it up.

That done, Lance looked for the exit, but his gaze found file cabinets instead. He hadn’t expected the server room to have old fashioned file cabinets-- he figured with their high-tech security, they’d rely on that rather than paper. But maybe they didn’t trust their tech as much as they let on. 

“I’m going to look through the cabinets,” Lance whispered. If this was stuff important enough to keep files on, this was stuff important enough to look into.  “We should have a couple more minutes before the camera’s get back online.” 

Keith eyed the cabinets and said, “Sure.”

“ _Look_ , I know this isn’t on the mission objective but..” Lance trailed off, unprepared for the lack of resistance from Keith.  “Oh. I’ll-- I’ll start with this one.”

Lance had a vague idea of what to look for; Allura never gave him all the details, but he knew what kind of intel she listened to with rapt attention and what kind of intel she just zoned out for. Tech with Altean signatures, interesting; employee records, not so much.

At first, Lance thought he’d just found a cabinet of personnel files. Just names of people, random details, thin reports. Nothing actually useful; he didn’t recognize any one of the files as a high profile target. 

But whenever he tried to read one of the reports, they didn’t make a lick of sense. Random measurements, indecipherable babble, doctor’s incomprehensible scrawl. Suspicious in a way Lance couldn’t begin to decipher. 

“Find anything?” Keith said, his impatience getting the better of him, apparently. “We don’t have much time left.” Or he was better at paying attention to deadlines than Lance was.

Huffing, Lance continued thumbing through the files. “They’re files on people,” Lance said, “But they’re not personnel files. I don’t actually know what any of them say.”

Gillman, Glotz, Hacket... they weren’t recognizable names, either, until he got to Holt. Digging out the file, it was just as nonsense as all the rest. It had to be a cipher of some kind, so Lance grabbed a couple more the files and tossed them to Keith. 

“One of the names, Holt--”

“--Holt?” Keith echoed, voice sounding empty.

That gave Lance pause. “Yeah, Holt,” he said hesitantly. “I recognize it, and since they’re probably using a cipher or something for the files, we need to scan these and--”

“Did you see Shirogane?” Keith interrupted. 

“I only got to the H’s, dude, we don’t have time to-”

Keith ignored him and the timer, digging into the file cabinet. “I told you, we don’t have long in here,” Lance said, and Keith just hastened his search. “If we’re stuck in here when Pidge’s security bug goes offline, we’ll-”

“--found it,” Keith interrupted, pulling out a thin manilla folder just like the others. He shoved it at Lance, but wouldn’t let go of it. “Take a scan of it, we have--”

Then, an alarm rung, loud and piercing. Keith’d taken down the camera, so they weren’t completely screwed, but they were pretty close to completely screwed. 

“Shit,” said Keith. He took his folder, a bundle of the ones Lance’d meant to scan, and bolted off. 

Lance slammed the file cabinet shut, bounding after Keith. “Put that back, that isn’t important, you--” Keith clearly didn’t have any sense of self-preservation, as he ignored Lance and started opening the vent shaft again. “You’re going to get us compromised--” 

Still, he followed Keith anyway, back into the cramped vent shaft. There was no way they were getting back out the way they came-- they’d have to climb up the vents, not down, and Lance hadn’t prepared for that situation at all-- but Keith took a different path. And for whatever reason-- desperation, probably-- Lance followed. 

The vent widened out, enough that Lance could catch up next to Keith instead of trailing behind. In front of them was an elevator shaft, empty sans a cable and a loud, horrible, approaching noise. 

“How did you--” Lance whispered, but Keith looked up. An elevator approached, and while Lance shifted back, Keith leaned forward. 

It was a terrible plan, but it wasn’t the worst plan. If Keith hadn’t gotten them in this whole situation, Lance’d be impressed. It only took barely a leap for the two of them to get on top the elevator, and as fast as Keith’d worked open all the rest of the vents, he worked open the top hatch of the elevator and threw himself in.

Lance wasn’t sure if Keith’d even checked if the elevator was occupied before jumping.

Following after Keith, Lance missed his landing. His elbow jammed against the wall, and his shoulder followed. Somehow, he managed not to fall flat on the floor, and leaned into the elevator wall. 

Blood pounding in his ears, Lance wanted to laugh and yell and make a scene, but he didn’t exactly have that luxury. Keith’d just... Lance didn’t even know what Keith wanted out of those papers. Sure, they could be important, but it wasn’t like they couldn’t go back for them. 

As Lance pried himself off the wall, Keith paced around the elevator, still holding on to the papers that’d get them both caught. He wasn’t paying Lance the slightest bit of attention, instead scanning the rest of the elevator with an uncharacteristic nervousness.

They’d really messed this up. Keith’d really messed this up, if Lance was being honest; Keith’d messed it out, and gotten them out, and Lance wasn’t following any of it.

“You…” Lance started, watching Keith pace some more. It was only just dawning on Lance how bad Keith’d messed this up; by the look on Keith’s face, Keith was three steps ahead of him. Saving the lecture for later, Lance said, “This leads to the lobby, right? It’s the home stretch, we have-- uh, you have some paperwork they’ll want, but as long as you act natural, we’ll fly under the radar. Easy.”

Keith clutched onto the papers like it’d be the death of him otherwise, fingers flinting over the top. He hadn’t opened the file yet-- it’d be total gobbledygook until Lance got Pidge to decipher it for them-- but he wanted to. Pacing, he his gaze lingered on the top of the elevator, where they entered. 

Lance didn’t want to be compromised. He had a job to do for Allura, he had just started to maybe have a lead on why Keith was invested in this, and he was even starting to not hate the guy. There had to be some way out of here without killing all three of those birds with one stone.

Keith’s nervousness wasn’t settling. He looked like he was going to bolt, as if the next noise would send him back into the vents. And while Lance was impressed Keith could get them out of the server room through the vents, he was pretty sure Keith knew he couldn’t escape the facilities the same way. 

The elevator numbers ticked; they only had a couple floors to go. If the two of them got out now, the guards would catch on to Keith quick. Cagey, rustling a bunch of papers, the look of a deer in headlights.  No other reason to look so cagey other than setting off an alarm. Unless Keith’d be an unwitting actor again, but...

“We can probably find a way out through the elevator shaft--” 

“No, no, no,” Lance said. He had an idea, and maybe Keith wouldn’t like it, but it was better than climbing through the vents again. “I have a plan. And it’s… you’re going to have to trust me on this.”

The elevator ticked again. Lance just needed the papers back, and a bit of time, and it’d be easy.  Lance motioned for the files, earning a long look from Keith. “I’ll trust you,” Keith said, the same unmarked earnestness from before, handing over the files. Taking only a moment to look at them, Lance took the files and shoved them in his jacket. 

Lance adjusted the papers, making his jacket look as ruffled as possible. They only had a couple of floors left, which was good for him, because if Lance had to explain anything, he wasn’t sure this’d work. 

The elevator beeped again-- one floor left. 

On that mark, Lance pushed Keith toward back of the elevator, one hand on the wall. Keith didn’t make heads or tails of it, the deer in headlights look transfixed on his face. Smiling a bit awkwardly, Lance tried to get close enough to make a fake kiss look convincing-- he’d done stage kisses before, but the sharp intake of Keith’s breath distracted him, and he wasn’t sure this was completely convincing. 

The elevator doors tinged open, and Lance hoped he was right about this--

Someone huffed behind them. “Uh, excuse-- excuse me,” said a voice, one vaguely familiar. “Are you still looking for the bathroom?”

Same guard as before; this was perfect. Lance turned around, fake embarrassment on his face. He probably was the only person in the room not actually mortified; Keith’s caginess finally fit the scene. He looked beat red and ready to bolt. 

“No,” Keith said, and bounded out.

And, just as Lance had predicted, the guard just let them go. A great plan; a perfect plan. No one batted an eye as they both of them bolted out the door and to their getaway car. This was great; Lance was great.

Lance shoved the files in the back of the car, not caring if they scattered to the floor. Maybe he could’ve taken more time with it, though, since Keith hadn’t managed to start the car. He fumbled with the keys, looking just as flustered as he looked before. He got them in, eventually, but it took longer than either of them wanted. 

“That was close,” Lance said, and Keith snorted. “At least you can act flustered.”

Keith laughed, high-pitched. He _still_ look flustered; Lance turned to look out the car window. “Thanks,” Keith said. “For getting us out of there.”

Lance had planned on gloating; he watched out the window as they pulled away from Galra Corp. “Sure,” he said instead.


End file.
